One Good Turn

Another book review.

Have you ever read any books by Carl Hiaasen? Maybe Sick Puppy, about land developers and toads in South Florida? Did you even wish he was British and the novels took place in England? Well if so, you are in luck, you can read One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. It is kind of like Carl Hiaasen with tea and crumpets and tins.

I read Behind the Scenes at the Museum, also by Kate Atkinson, some years back and really liked it, but it was nothing like Carl Hiaasen. I would recommend it anyway, a bit more serious tale of a British family in the 1950's with more than a few family secrets.

I got out One Good Turn on a whim and read it in two days. It goes fast. It is a book of coincidences, quirky characters, and unexpected plot twists. It is set in Edinburgh and is full of very British characters, language, culture. Good for an anglophile like me.

I particularly want someone to read it so I can ask them a question about one of the characters. There is a twist at the end that I did not see coming and I want to know if others can see it coming...... so read it and then let me know so I can ask you something.

Farm tour

We went on a tour of our CSA farm last weekend, it was really interesting. I know a bit about growing vegetables, but I know nothing about farming, so it was quite fascinating to learn about how different it is to grow crops than it is to grow plants. They have about 46 acres in production, probably about 35 different crops. Think of all the planning, the crop rotation, the different management approaches, the cover crops. Whew, it makes me tired just thinking about it.


I thought these red lettuces were quite pretty, having gone to seed because they were not a big seller this year, and thus not even worth picking.

The obligatory barn shot.



And another barn shot. How can you resist a barn? Especially in the Midwest, I think we are required to take pictures of our barns here.

Plant quiz

Guess this plant. It is a native American prairie plant.

For Mary

She likes blue and white flowers. It makes me think of Scandinavia, or antique china serving plates, or Chinese vases, or the flags of El Salvador, Greece and Israel, or sunny skies and bright clouds.




Those are Allium caeruleum and yarrow, by the way.

For my husband

He likes orange.

Garden View

So, you asked for garden pictures, here they are, taken through the screen window upstairs. Things a re a bit wilder now, in fact too wild. I am almost unable to uproot a plant unless it is a rampant weed, so the more aggressive plants I have are spreading and suffocating the more delicate ones, and everything is out of control

Where have I been?

It has been a while...

There just aren't enough hours in a day. We don't have kids, I don't have a demanding job, and there is no health crisis, and yet I can barely get what I want to get done each day. When I think of what I want to do each day, besides work 8 hours and sleep 8 hours, it is truly a long list, mostly of things that will never get done, like

learn to enjoy cooking
read a book
watch a movie
knit
bead
quilt
garden
walk the dog
explore town
write blog
web surf
Flickr
keep in touch with friend
decorate house
sit and contemplate the universe
read the New York Times
exercise
riding my bike around the arboretum


I mean, don't you want to do those things daily? And then there is the travel, and the going to the theater, and going to see bands play, and doing good works, learning woodworking, learning a new language, watching TV, cleaning the house, and on and on.

I guess it is an improvement over spending 99% of your time hunting, gathering, and just trying to stay alive, but I feel that the older I get, the less I do. Odd. Or maybe just that mortal coil shifting and shuffling in the background.

Before and soon after

As if we didn't have enough work this summer, what with repainting inside, staining and finishing our new windows, shopping for new furniture, and shopping for a canoe, we had to dig up our entire front yard. It had deteriorated from lawn to "green stuff', and just looked awful. So we dug up the sod, dug in 4 yards of compost, and had an empty plot.


Then I went and bought $150 worth of perennials, we planted then, then ordered 5 yards of mulch, most of which we spread on the new flower bed. The flowers include aster, monarda, daylilies, irises, geraniums, little bluestem, prairie dropseed, a poppy, salvia, an ornamental oregano, and a few others. The color scheme is BRIGHT pink and purple.


Since then it has barely rained and we have watered, watered, watered. I think if it doesn't start raining soon, I am going to get very nervous that even with watering, the plants will die.

Pink

I spend a lot of time thinking about the flowers in my garden. I think about where they are in the garden, where they come from, what other species there are, and stuff like that. But mostly I think about the color. And what I like in flower color is clearly PINK.

These peonies were here when we moved in, they are in a very shady spot, and still manage to produce blooms like this. I am astounded that something could be this beautiful.

Hey, another peony that was here when we moved in. Peonies are just mindbogglingly fabulous. They are drought tolerant and very long lived. if I were going to be buried I would want peonies on my grave.
This is a Callirhoe I just planted. It has one flower so far. A stunning shade of purpley-red magenta.
I bought this as a whim, I think it is an Osteospermum. It is more of a purple pink.


This plant, Geranium 'Max Frei' is great in the garden, better than the picture would suggest.
It is a clear magenta. I love bright magenta flowers.

And finally, my rose 'William Baffin', it is taking over and shading out my prairie plants, but I do not do a good job staking it. It is more of a lipstick pink, not really bubblegum. It probably has hundreds of blooms right now. Thanks 'William Baffin'!


I do have non-pink flowers, it is just that the pink ones grab me more. Maybe since red and green are opposites, there is more tension in a green and red combination, even if it is light red, not true red? Then why don't I have more red flowers in the garden? You might think that would be even better.

I think maybe I can't decide between a pastels-subdued garden and a knock your socks off bright colors garden, and pink lets me have a little of both.

Rain

The sky is crying, the streets are full of tears
Rain come down wash away my fears
And all this writing on the wall
Oh I can read between the lines

Rain come down forgive this dirty town
Rain come down and give this dirty town
A drink of water, a drink of wine.


Doesn't the rain remind you of something? It reminds me, always, of these lyrics from "Hand in Hand", by Dire Straits, from the album Making Movies.

It also reminds me of this one:

Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville;
Quelle est cette langeur
Qui penetre mon coeur?

Accents missing, the first stanza from Paul Verlaine's "Il pleure dans mon coeur", from Romances sans paroles.

Another mystery of the brain, how these little snippets are stored until the point when they are triggered by some stimulus. Then they pop up, and you smile, thinking of some long lost time when you first heard the song, or read the poem. How you were 18, in college, half your life time ago.

Very Proustian, no?

Relative poverty

Relative poverty is going to ruin this planet. We can't be happy (statistically as a people, not necessarily individually) as long as the guy next to us has more. I never understood that whole "keeping up with the Joneses" thing until I started thinking about our rich neighbors. They sold their business and came into about $80 million dollars. The husband has decided to go to medical school in California. They are not selling their house here, rather they have bought a private jet and learned (or knew already) how to fly so that they can commute back and forth. It would be about a five hour flight with one stopover.

And they traded in their Volvo station wagon for a new Lexus convertible. It looks so snazzy.

Now I feel a bit deprived. We drive a Honda, which cost about $12,000 seven years ago. We don't have a private plane. We can't retire and live off our millions for the rest of our lives.

Of course, I know that 99.99999% of the world is MUCH worse of than us, but I can begin to see how living near richer people than yourselves could make one a bit unhappy. And of course, this is all we see in the media, celebrities enjoying themselves on private islands, in luxury hotels, etc. Somehow that is easier to take than the people across the street from you having a private jet...